“Surveillance Capitalism”. Really!?
Robert Malone posted a Substack article about Shoshana Zuboff, the American author, professor, social psychologist, philosopher, and scholar who coined the term “surveillance capitalism”.
Who is Shoshana Zuboff?
From Wikipedia, I learned.
“Zuboff's scholarship on surveillance capitalism as a "rogue mutation of capitalism" has become a primary framework for understanding big data and the larger field of commercial surveillance that she describes as a "surveillance-based economic order". She argues that neither privacy nor antitrust laws provide adequate protection from the unprecedented practices of surveillance capitalism. Zuboff describes surveillance capitalism as an economic and social logic. Her book originated the concept of "instrumentarian power", in comparison to traditional totalitarian power. Instrumentarian power is a consequence of surveillance capitalist operations which threaten individual autonomy and democracy. As the driving force behind it, she identifies capital accumulation, without being confined to market capitalism.[15]
Many issues that plague contemporary society including the assault on privacy and the so-called "privacy paradox", behavioral targeting, fake news, ubiquitous tracking, legislative and regulatory failure, algorithmic governance, social media addiction, abrogation of human rights, democratic destabilization, and more are reinterpreted and explained through the lens of surveillance capitalism's economic and social imperatives. Her work is an influential source for the Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence community.” -Wikipedia
Shoshana has superficial IT and Economics knowledge.
When I saw the term “Surveillance Capitalism”, I felt sure that it had been a creation of someone who is on the political ‘left’ and has a superficial understanding of modern Information Technology - just enough to be afraid of it.
As a Sociologist, Zuboff’s lens on IT likely views it only from a great distance and, as such, would provide her no understanding or insights into its myriad inner workings. There are tens of thousands of well-justified IT applications in use across the broad economy of which she may never know.
Her term “Surveillance Capitalism” reflects her fear of a hobgoblin of her own uninformed and biased imagination. It further suggests a sensationalized attempt to malign the word ‘capitalism’ beyond what many left-wing scholars and journalists have already done incessantly. I saw no evidence that Shoshana has studied Economics and, therefore, likely understands it superficially. As a lifelong academic, she has worked within academic institutions which have become notorious hotbeds of Marxist notions about Economics. Capitalism has been attacked endlessly by the socialists and statists who inhabit those academic communities in very large numbers.
It’s not surprising that Pofessor Zuboff offers a one-sided perspective on two vast and intersecting domains about which she is unqualified to write: Information Technology and Economics.
Capitalism has been maligned because…
Dr. Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Econmic Forum, has stated the “shareholder Capitalism” must be replaced with “stakeholder Capitalism” in which he tells the youth of today that “you will own nothings and be happy”.
The United Nations created the 17 Sustainability Goals which its over 190 members states (nations like Canada) have agreed to follow and which conform to the vision of a Stakeholder Capitalism future for all of earth’s 8 billion human inhabitants and Mother Nature’s untold numbers of non-human inhabitants.
Stakeholders Capitalism has been “re-invented” as an undesireable strawman created by people who fail to understand and appreciate the significance of genuine Capitalism as the economic engine of human prosperity. I have referred to this “affliction of misinformation about Capitalism” the “sugar daddy syndrome”.
Those afflicted by sugar daddy syndrome are typically adult citizens who are wholly or partially dependant on the work and sacrifices of others through the use of laws, regulations, taxation and public ‘revenue tools’.
These dependents believe themeslves to be “entitled” to the money or privileges bestowed on them by said others because they have been told repeatedly that they are “special”, “victims” and therefore deserving of “free stuff”.
Economic capitalism in its purest form
The voluntary exchange of goods and/or services on mutually agreeable terms between willing people is how a “free market economy” was supposed to work in theory. Capital was added to this form of economy as a means to increase human productivity - to make more and better products and services available to human communities. Prices were needed as an information mechanism to signal how to use scare resources (raw materials, human inputs, production facilities, etc) as cost-effective and efficiently as possible.
Unfortunately, human greed and lust for power seeped into “free market Capitalism” especially after the Industrial Revolution took root in Western societies. Aberrations to the mechanisms of free market capitalism began to appear and accelerated over time.
The only genuine examples that appear to exist today are the street-side lemonaid stands who are manned by little boys and girls who offer homemade cold drinks to passersby on hot days for the price of pocket change.
Unfortunately for these young entrepreneurs, even these examples of “free market capitalism” have been constrained by government regulators in some jurisdictions.
Other Aberrations.
CRONY CAPITALISM is a corruption of pure capitalism in which a collusion (a quasi or actual partnership), based on mutually self-serving gains, has been established between government entities and large corporations. The government entities use their legislative powers to control and manipulate markets that would otherwise operate according to straightforward market forces of supply and demand, and carried out under the principle of Freedom of Informed Choice.
CRONY STATISM and CRONY SOCIALISM are two other forms of economic corruption that operate in the same manner as crony capitalism but with different stakeholders. I have written about these in earlier MY LIFE LENS posts.
Zuboff’s Myopia
Zubcoff offers a one-sided view of the strawman (and boogeyman) she has described as “surveillance capitalism”. She is expressing her fears about something that she doesn’t understand. Hers is a very human response to the unknown.
Surveillance technology offers the potential for both good and evil. My Apple Watch monitors my actions and alerts me when it suspects that I may have fallen, become injured or worse. Some day, this feature may save my life.
On the other hand, monitoring my online interactions with others without my consent is certainly a nuisance that I could do without. Using my online choices to help vendors to hawk their offerings to me is unacceptable. Hopefully, companies like TEMU and Google will eventually stop sending ads to me that feature women’s clothing. (I am a 73 yo man).
Zuboff is correct that potential exists for great harm on the Internet, but it cannot me blamed solely on “the voluntary exchange of goods and services between willing parties”.
However, she ignores the central roles that governments play, and fail to play, in ensuring that these transactions are carried out voluntarily with the full “informed consent” of all participating parties.
Citizens complain often about the lack of accountability and transparency government affairs. Ideally, many citizens would expect those officials to regulate corporations to the same standards. However, if they are unable to meet these standards within their own operations, can we really expect them to succeed in the enforcement of equivalent standards in the broader private sector?
Better alternatives
Bitcoin is a decentralized Blockchain network based a public ledger that anyone can see. Accountability and transparency was built into its design and operating architecture. Every transaction that has ever been conducted over the Bitcoin network, including the very first one some 15 years ago, is publically available.
Bitcoin is a form of “surveillance capitalism” that few informed consumers would oppose unless they are doing something illegal. This video describes the consequences to dishonest people who try to scam the Bitcoin market.
If a superior trading platform exists, like Bitcoin’s Blockchain, for carrying out exchanges between peoples in an accountable and transparent manner, why have our central planners and political elites failed to adopt it?
The question answers itself, doesn’t it?
RFK Jr. Exposes How Much the Fed Has Robbed from the Middle Class and the Poor
“Inflation, as we all know, is theft ... If you had $1,000 six years ago, that $1000 has a value of $520 today in terms of its capacity to purchase goods and services.”
“The Fed has engineered an uber-efficient money-printing machine to perpetrate the systematic robbery that has gutted the American middle class and decimated America's working poor.”
“Bitcoin is the off-ramp from the inflation highway of doom. If the world were on a Bitcoin standard and our money held its value, we would all have the ability to live more abundant lives. Bitcoiners have it right. Fix the money, fix the world.”